First in a three-part series which sees Joanna Lumley travel the 6,400-mile route from Hong Kong to Moscow. Joanna begins her train journey in Hong Kong, which she last visited when she was four. She has not been to Moscow since 1966, when she was there as a model at the height of the Cold War. In the first episode, she sets off from The Peak above Victoria Harbour, before jumping on the Mass Transit Railway to Shenzhen, where she catches the bullet train to Beijing. She discovers that more Rolls-Royces are sold in China's capital than anywhere else in the world, visits a bizarre restaurant dedicated to Chairman Mao and encounters an old lady who knew the favourite concubine of Emperor Puyi, the last emperor of China. She then joins the Trans-Siberian, stopping off in Datong and visiting a wild stretch of the Great Wall. From there she travels by overnight train to Mongolia, where she passes through the Gobi Desert and visits a local shaman.
In episode two, Joanna is in Mongolia and spends time with some Mongolian nomads, visits a giant statue of Genghis Khan and a gold mine. She spends time in the capital Ulan Bator where she tracks down the amazing Mongolian throat singers before catching the train to Putin’s Russia. She meets Mongolian tradesmen on the train before crossing the border into Siberia.
In the final episode, Joanna is in deepest Siberia heading for Moscow, which she last visited in 1966. Her first stop is Lake Baikal, one of the deepest lakes in the world. She drinks vodka with a local fisherman before getting back on the train for Krasnoyarsk where she meets an oligarch. From there it’s across the vast expanse of Siberia to Yekaterinburg, a city with a dark history. It is where the Russian Royal family were murdered. Joanna pushes on for Moscow, where she discovers a very different city from the one she saw in the sixties. She visits Stalin’s nuclear bunker, encounters Russian models before finding the place where she was photographed in 1966 and that inspired the whole adventure.
